Advice on coping with a lonley little

Hi, it's been a while, I'm not sure if any of you remember us. I don't think any of us have been here since maybe March?

Basically, we've been sick, we've been really sick and that sucks. And during that time, the bigs started posting on video game websites to try and make friends with similar hobbies. It's hard socialising as a trans woman and even doing petty things like talking $#%^ about Xbox was a relief during the hard times. Still, Bridie has been feeling lonely too, and unless one of the three friends who know how to deal with her are around, she basically has no one as she just can't manage conversation with our parents. As such Bridie started posting on the video game forums too, and when she said the magic words "I'm a kid" or even worse "I'm 6", it cause our account to be flagged and mod tickets to be issued which led to me having to explain the DID situation which still ended up resulting in bans or having to promise Bridie won't post again which she inevitably does. As such, Bridie is still lonely and now we are also quite lonely too.

I'm not sure what the solution to this is. I've been trying to look for places that would be understanding of the whole kid in an adult body situation but all I find are either psych forums which don't tend to have the kind of discussions that we're really interested in, or are DDLG forums which are inappropriate for obvious reasons and also largely aren't quite what we're looking for demographic and discussion wise. Kinds of things we are generally into is basically nerd hobbies. Comic books, video games, science fiction, and cop shows (not a nerd interest they can just be a comfort). I've found reddit depending on the subreddit may not be too mean but reddit just doesn't lead to good and meaningful discussions.

This would also not be a problem if Bridie wasn't still basically co-host, but she is. She's not quite out every day any more, but she's out at least 4 times a week and often more. It's unrealistic to expect her to just silo herself off from the world for that time

Any advice would be nice. Bridie just needs to see familliar faces every now and then pop up on our screen.
Thank you, Dorothea Possum

Hi guys

Its Lily. I remember you and Bridie and talking about video games once! We don’t have anyone who understands about us younger ones either and our host lives on their own so we have to be able to do everything ourselves (or at least ‘enough’ to manage daily independantly).

We can age slide by blending with one older than us just temporary while we’re at the front so like i got enough skills to use the computer and make us a cup of tea but I’m still Lily.

I feel lonely sometimes too cos like I love opening presents and am excited about new games the bigs have got us for xmas but on alot of DID groups usually the only place we can talk to ‘other littles’ alot find christmas difficult and don’t want to talk about it all.

We’ve only got one family member left we see them xmas day but we’re not allowed to ‘act like a child’ in front of them. Our host is older than the sibling so they think its a ‘bad enough’ that we’re not normal (never married/had kids due to autism/physical issues). we can ony come out in secret when no-one else is about.

Lily

Shadowlands wrote:Hi guys

Its Lily. I remember you and Bridie and talking about video games once! We don’t have anyone who understands about us younger ones either and our host lives on their own so we have to be able to do everything ourselves (or at least ‘enough’ to manage daily independantly).

We can age slide by blending with one older than us just temporary while we’re at the front so like i got enough skills to use the computer and make us a cup of tea but I’m still Lily.

I feel lonely sometimes too cos like I love opening presents and am excited about new games the bigs have got us for xmas but on alot of DID groups usually the only place we can talk to ‘other littles’ alot find christmas difficult and don’t want to talk about it all.

We’ve only got one family member left we see them xmas day but we’re not allowed to ‘act like a child’ in front of them. Our host is older than the sibling so they think its a ‘bad enough’ that we’re not normal (never married/had kids due to autism/physical issues). we can ony come out in secret when no-one else is about.

Lily

Hey Lily,

That really sucks I'm so sorry.Bridie has times when she's allowed to front and our parents accept her and love her and our brother tolerates her but diesn't fully understand, and we have a few in person friends who understand bridie it's just more I don't know, we'd kind of like an online community to make a main community again since we've been struggling to find places that don't throw a fit when Bridie posts.

We got a ban from a gaming forum recently because Bridie posted about being scared of an infection when had when we were at the hospital and it was super obviously her. Here is nice, here is super nice, but littles are still restricted to the DID subform and i don't want to be rude but the DID subforum is pretty dead nowadays.

I hope you can have a good christmas. We are having a low-stakes family Christmas. Our brother is coming down from up the coast, and one of our close friends is coming over to partake in the festivities
9and try beat my parents at cards). There's another friend we invited but they'll be in Sydney with their family to celebrate Hanukkah so we can't see them until maybe new years which blows. There's a few surprises for Bridie this year. I hope you have some surprises too from your host, a brave girl like you deserves them.

Hazel (puppy) they/them

awh Thank you for saying I’m brave!

I’m glad Bridie has some people she can safely be out in front of.

On general forums (for non DID people) Then we just post under one group name but don’t tell anyone in those groups about us…same rules as for ‘outside world/people'

We can post to talk about a game or ask for help with a game but not tell anyone about us. If they ask we give some details of host body not individuals. I always have an older one co-hosting with me though and they check over what I write before I post.

on FB there are some DID groups that have ‘littles groups chats’ on the messenger (and ones for teens too)

Lily

Shadowlands wrote:awh Thank you for saying I’m brave!

I’m glad Bridie has some people she can safely be out in front of.

On general forums (for non DID people) Then we just post under one group name but don’t tell anyone in those groups about us…same rules as for ‘outside world/people'

We can post to talk about a game or ask for help with a game but not tell anyone about us. If they ask we give some details of host body not individuals. I always have an older one co-hosting with me though and they check over what I write before I post.

on FB there are some DID groups that have ‘littles groups chats’ on the messenger (and ones for teens too)

Lily

Thank you for the suggetsions. I guess the problem is that if we become entrenched in a community we eventually tell people we have DID and once you work that out you have people working out different typing patterns and if you're aware of littles existing it's relaly easy to spot Bridie. We're ok if we're just casually in spaces but as very lonely trans women we tend to cling to whatever community we can get.

We also are sadly not on facebook or really any major social media, as we mostly just use messaging apps now as we've had trouble with bridie getting harassed when they post on places like twitter

Hazel

PrimePossum wrote:
Thank you for the suggetsions. I guess the problem is that if we become entrenched in a community we eventually tell people we have DID and once you work that out you have people working out different typing patterns and if you're aware of littles existing it's relaly easy to spot Bridie. We're ok if we're just casually in spaces but as very lonely trans women we tend to cling to whatever community we can get.

We also are sadly not on facebook or really any major social media, as we mostly just use messaging apps now as we've had trouble with bridie getting harassed when they post on places like twitter

Hazel

Host JJ here …. I guess that is going to be difficult if Bridie is not able to conceal the fact it is not the host speaking/typing.

I think our systems probably work differently..our External Hosts had no awareness of others inside for most of our lives.. Maddie was the last to not know at all in our mid 40’s. she had a breakdown and split off into fragments after our last dog died (who she saw as her assistance dog).

For nearly all our lives our ‘insiders’ knew they were a secret and had to stay a secret as we were born in an era when we would have been insitutionalised had anyone realised. So they actually used to find it fun to ’sneak out like a little stealth Ninja’ for brief moments knowing outside people had no idea! we also didn’t grow up in the Social media/internet era so it was easy for one of us to be host for classes at college/university (that were away from home) and a different one(s) to be host for going home for the weekend or holidays.

Our friends at the time were deaf too so they wouldn’t have realised any change of voice/pitch anyway as long as we signed so our littles learned sign language so they could slip out undetected if we were out having fun..visiting beach, fun fair, cinema etc with deaf friends.

I think our gatekeeper would reward them at the time with more time out the longer they managed to slip out then back in undetected. The EH would remain clueless and just not remember that moment or an insider would cover it up under the guise of being the host. It was much easier to get away with back then! We were fully mobile and moved about a lot so could keep the diferent friends separate.

It was much harder after becoming housebound, social worker wanted us to join FB to stay in contact with friends from university as we were isolated from the deaf community so where as before we may have had no contact with college friends whilst at home for the holidays so that host didn’t have to worry about it, now we had people from ‘social mask/hosts life’ contacting us when a ‘home (and usually secret) host’ was up front

I think thats when things started to break down for us and some insiders started to resent people from ‘past hosts life’ which was seen as finished now for us (ie after we had left university) but were still making demands during time ‘secret ones’ were having ’their time out’.

The only place our littles are allowed to give a seperate name is in DID groups.

We’ve discovered our littles find Tulpa groups fun too as they talk about their 'inner worlds’ more and have joined them pretending to be ‘Host and Tulpa’ so they can have their own identity.

Shadowlands wrote:

PrimePossum wrote:
Thank you for the suggetsions. I guess the problem is that if we become entrenched in a community we eventually tell people we have DID and once you work that out you have people working out different typing patterns and if you're aware of littles existing it's relaly easy to spot Bridie. We're ok if we're just casually in spaces but as very lonely trans women we tend to cling to whatever community we can get.

We also are sadly not on facebook or really any major social media, as we mostly just use messaging apps now as we've had trouble with bridie getting harassed when they post on places like twitter

Hazel

Host JJ here …. I guess that is going to be difficult if Bridie is not able to conceal the fact it is not the host speaking/typing.

I think our systems probably work differently..our External Hosts had no awareness of others inside for most of our lives.. Maddie was the last to not know at all in our mid 40’s. she had a breakdown and split off into fragments after our last dog died (who she saw as her assistance dog).

For nearly all our lives our ‘insiders’ knew they were a secret and had to stay a secret as we were born in an era when we would have been insitutionalised had anyone realised. So they actually used to find it fun to ’sneak out like a little stealth Ninja’ for brief moments knowing outside people had no idea! we also didn’t grow up in the Social media/internet era so it was easy for one of us to be host for classes at college/university (that were away from home) and a different one(s) to be host for going home for the weekend or holidays.

Our friends at the time were deaf too so they wouldn’t have realised any change of voice/pitch anyway as long as we signed so our littles learned sign language so they could slip out undetected if we were out having fun..visiting beach, fun fair, cinema etc with deaf friends.

I think our gatekeeper would reward them at the time with more time out the longer they managed to slip out then back in undetected. The EH would remain clueless and just not remember that moment or an insider would cover it up under the guise of being the host. It was much easier to get away with back then! We were fully mobile and moved about a lot so could keep the diferent friends separate.

It was much harder after becoming housebound, social worker wanted us to join FB to stay in contact with friends from university as we were isolated from the deaf community so where as before we may have had no contact with college friends whilst at home for the holidays so that host didn’t have to worry about it, now we had people from ‘social mask/hosts life’ contacting us when a ‘home (and usually secret) host’ was up front

I think thats when things started to break down for us and some insiders started to resent people from ‘past hosts life’ which was seen as finished now for us (ie after we had left university) but were still making demands during time ‘secret ones’ were having ’their time out’.

The only place our littles are allowed to give a seperate name is in DID groups.

We’ve discovered our littles find Tulpa groups fun too as they talk about their 'inner worlds’ more and have joined them pretending to be ‘Host and Tulpa’ so they can have their own identity.

Yeah things are different for us but not in ways I can super articulate?
I mean for one thing it's basically just the two of us right now, me and Bridie, and we both manage things the other one can't. This creates a situation where Bridie both wants and kind of needs Bridie time which causes problems if Bridie time goes on longer than a few hours, especially if we're depressed.

I would also say part of the issue is that we're younger maybe? We don't really have a lot of roots down in a lot of communities as we're still early 20s. We are however disabled and mostly housebound, especially with this summer heat we are getting. Which once again makes things hard as like it's a lot easier for people to "get" Bridie in person as online you just think "OMG it's a child?" while in person it's just like "Oh this is weird but I will try to understand because Hazel is my friend". And most people who've met Bridie IRL do at least try to understand. It's just hard when other people won't put in the effort to not be immediately weirded out

PrimePossum wrote:
Yeah things are different for us but not in ways I can super articulate?
I mean for one thing it's basically just the two of us right now, me and Bridie, and we both manage things the other one can't. This creates a situation where Bridie both wants and kind of needs Bridie time which causes problems if Bridie time goes on longer than a few hours, especially if we're depressed.

I would also say part of the issue is that we're younger maybe? We don't really have a lot of roots down in a lot of communities as we're still early 20s. We are however disabled and mostly housebound, especially with this summer heat we are getting. Which once again makes things hard as like it's a lot easier for people to "get" Bridie in person as online you just think "OMG it's a child?" while in person it's just like "Oh this is weird but I will try to understand because Hazel is my friend". And most people who've met Bridie IRL do at least try to understand. It's just hard when other people won't put in the effort to not be immediately weirded out

I guessed your body was younger than ours..our host body is 55 so I guess it would seem even more odd to strangers if the voice of a 6 or 8 year old came out! People around here are not so accepting of things they don’t understand.

We were physically active in our early 20’s though and had no idea we could possibly be DID or that it even existed! In our country DID is still not recognised by most medical professionals and we would be more likely to get diagnosed with schizophrenia and sectioned or put on heavy medication if we mentioned being able to ’talk to other voices in our head’.,,not much of a life for one that was physically able at the time.

Even our current life as restricted as it is, has more freedom than that.

I’m glad you have support and recognition though wherever you are and getting it at so young an age too. Maybe there are other people with DID near to you or some kind of in-person support group for people with DID or other Mental Health issues? They may be more open to understanding?


JJ